The Patrician eBook

It has been said that Miltoun’s face was not
unhandsome; for Audrey Noel at this moment when his
eyes were so near hers, and his lips touching her,
he was transfigured, and had become the spirit of all
beauty. And she, with heart beating fast against
him, her eyes, half closing from delight, and her
hair asking to be praised with its fragrance, her cheeks
fainting pale with emotion, and her arms too languid
with happiness to embrace him—­she, to him,
was the incarnation of the woman that visits dreams.

So passed that moment.

The bee ended it; who, impatient with flowers that
hid their honey so deep, had entangled himself in
Audrey’s hair. And then, seeing that words,
those dreaded things, were on his lips, she tried to
kiss them back. But they came:

“When will you marry me?”

It all swayed a little. And with marvellous
rapidity the whole position started up before her.
She saw, with preternatural insight, into its nooks
and corners. Something he had said one day, when
they were talking of the Church view of marriage and
divorce, lighted all up. So he had really never
known about her! At this moment of utter sickness,
she was saved from fainting by her sense of humour—­her
cynicism. Not content to let her be, people’s
tongues had divorced her; he had believed them!
And the crown of irony was that he should want to
marry her, when she felt so utterly, so sacredly his,
to do what he liked with sans forms or ceremonies.
A surge of bitter feeling against the man who stood
between her and Miltoun almost made her cry out.
That man had captured her before she knew the world
or her own soul, and she was tied to him, till by
some beneficent chance he drew his last breath when
her hair was grey, and her eyes had no love light,
and her cheeks no longer grew pale when they were
kissed; when twilight had fallen, and the flowers,
and bees no longer cared for her.

It was that feeling, the sudden revolt of the desperate
prisoner, which steeled her to put out her hand, take
up the paper, and give it to Miltoun.

When he had read the little paragraph, there followed
one of those eternities which last perhaps two minutes.

He said, then:

“It’s true, I suppose?” And, at
her silence, added: “I am sorry.”

This queer dry saying was so much more terrible than
any outcry, that she remained, deprived even of the
power of breathing, with her eyes still fixed on Miltoun’s
face.

The smile of the old Cardinal had come up there, and
was to her like a living accusation. It seemed
strange that the hum of the bees and flies and the
gentle swishing of the limetree should still go on
outside, insisting that there was a world moving and
breathing apart from her, and careless of her misery.
Then some of her courage came back, and with it her
woman’s mute power. It came haunting about
her face, perfectly still, about her lips, sensitive
and drawn, about her eyes, dark, almost mutinous under
their arched brows. She stood, drawing him with
silence and beauty.